ELECTRICAL POWER RE-REGULATION
IS SHOCKING
When Washington truly and
honestly deregulates -- as it did with
Airline fares in the late
1970s and petroleum industry pricing in
the early 1980s --
consumers enjoy a bonanza of lower airfares
and fuel supplies come
into equilibrium with demand. But when
Washington reverses course
and substitutes regulation for the
workings of the market,
the result can and will be horrid. This
is what is about to happen
to electricity markets, says Stephen
Moore (Club for Growth).
Congress is on the verge
of re-regulating electricity, much in
the pattern which created
shortages and sky-high prices in
California -- and stuck
taxpayers there with a multibillion
dollar bailout, further
adding insult to injury. According to
Moore:
o Bureaucrats at the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
plan to impose vast new controls over local and state
electric utilities.
o It would place
power-generating companies under authority
of newly-created Regional Transmission Organizations.
o Bureaucrats are
trying to sell it as "deregulation" -- but
it requires 603 pages of new rules and an initial budget
of $750 million to implement!
In truth, it is
politically inspired, Moore explains, penalizing
New Mexico, Colorado,
Idaho, Arizona and many Southern states in
order to benefit states
with political clout such as California
and New York -- by
rewarding them with lower prices.
Analysts ask: What is the
issue here that Congress is trying to
solve? After all, U.S. electricity prices have been
falling for
years. The Cato Institute has determined that the
average
household pays less than
one-third in wage-adjusted prices for
electricity today as did
the equivalent household in 1950.
Experts warn that
repeating the California mistake will extend
the next energy crisis
throughout the entire country.
Source: Stephen Moore
(Club for Growth), "Pull the
Re-Regulation
Plug," Washington
Times, July 16, 2003.
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